Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film tells an alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's leadership, one planned by Shosanna Dreyfus, a young French Jewish cinema proprietor and the other by a team of Jewish American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine. Summary In 1941, SS colonel Hans Landa interrogates French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite about the whereabouts of the last unaccounted-for Jewish family in the area, the Dreyfus family. Landa suspects that they are hiding under the floor, and in exchange for the Germans agreeing to leave his family alone for the rest of the war, La Padite somberly confirms it. Landa orders his SS soldiers to shoot through the floorboards, killing all but one of the Dreyfus family; Shosanna, the daughter, escapes. Three years later, Lieutenant Aldo Raine of the First Special Service Force rounds up and recruits Jewish-American soldiers to the Basterds, a militia who spread fear among the German soldiers by killing and scalping them. The Basterds include Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz and Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz, the latter a German soldier who murdered thirteen Gestapo officers. In Germany, Adolf Hitler interviews a young German soldier, Private Butz, the only survivor of a recent Basterd attack on his squad, who reveals the details of the attack and that Raine carved the Nazi swastika into Butz's forehead with a knife so he could never hide that he served in the German Heer. Shosanna is now living in Paris and operating a cinema under the name Emmanuelle Mimieux. She meets Fredrick Zoller, a German war hero who killed 250 soldiers in a single battle, who is to star in a Nazi propaganda film, Stolz der Nation (Nation's Pride). Infatuated with Shosanna, Zoller convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere of the film at her cinema. Shosanna plots with Marcel, the French West African projectionist and her lover, to kill the Nazi leaders attending the premiere by setting the cinema ablaze. Unknown to Shosanna, British Royal Marine Lieutenant Archie Hicox is planning an attack at the premiere with the Basterds. Hicox goes to a tavern with Stiglitz and Basterd Wilhelm Wicki to meet an undercover agent, the German film star Bridget von Hammersmark. Hicox draws the attention of sergeant Wilhelm and Gestapo major Dieter Hellstrom with his unusual accent. He gives himself away by ordering three drinks and gesturing "three" with his hand in an American way. Discovered, Stiglitz and the Basterds open fire, killing everyone except Wilhelm and Hammersmark, who is wounded. Raine arrives and negotiates with Wilhelm for Hammersmark's release, but she shoots Wilhelm when he lowers his guard. Raine, believing Hammersmark set Hicox and his men up, tortures Hammersmark, who convinces him that she is not a spy and reveals that Hitler will attend the film premiere. He decides to continue the mission. Landa investigates the aftermath at the tavern and finds one of Hammersmark's shoes and a napkin with her signature. At the premiere, two of the Basterds, Omar Ulmer and Donny, join Raine in posing as Italians, hoping to fool the Germans unfamiliar with the language. However, Landa, who speaks fluent Italian, converses briefly with the Basterds before sending Donowitz and Ulmer to their seats. He takes Hammersmark to a private room, verifies that the shoe from the tavern fits her, then strangles her to death. Raine and another Basterd, Smithson "The Little Man" Utivich, are taken prisoner, but Landa has Raine contact his superior with the OSS and cuts a deal: he will allow the mission to proceed in exchange for immunity and rewards. During the screening, Zoller slips away to the projection room to see Shosanna. After she rejects his advances, he becomes aggressive. She pretends to acquiesce, then pulls a pistol and shoots him. Zoller, wounded, raises his pistol and shoots her before they both die. As Stolz der Nation reaches its climax, spliced-in footage of Shosanna tells the audience that they are about to be killed by a Jew. Marcel, having locked the doors of the cinema, ignites a pile of flammable nitrate film behind the screen as Shosanna's image laughs and goes up in flames. Ulmer and Donowitz break into the box containing Hitler and Goebbels, killing them. They then fire their submachine guns into the crowd until the bombs go off, killing everyone in the theater. Landa and his radio operator drive Raine and Utivich into Allied territory, where they surrender before Raine shoots the radio operator and carves a swastika into Landa's forehead. Cast * Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine * Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus * Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa * Eli Roth as Donny Donowitz * Michael Fassbender as Archie Hicox * Diane Kruger as Bridget von Hammersmark * Daniel Brühl as Fredrick Zoller * Til Schweiger as Hugo Stiglitz * Gedeon Burkhard as Wilhelm * Jacky Ido as Marcel * B. J. Novak as Smithson Utivich * Omar Doom as Omar Ulmer * August Diehl as Dieter Hellstrom * Denis Ménochet as Perrier LaPadite * Sylvester Groth as Joseph Goebbels * Martin Wuttke as Adolf Hitler * Mike Myers as Ed Fenech * Julie Dreyfus as Francesca Mondino * Richard Sammel as Werner Rachtman * Alexander Fehling as Wilhelm Trivia * Roughly only thirty percent of the film is spoken in English. * Quentin Tarantino was considering abandoning the film while the casting search for someone to play Colonel Hans Landa took place, fearing he'd written a role that was unplayable. * Quentin Tarantino worked on the script for almost a decade. * Christoph Waltz dubbed his own performance in the German version. * This is the first Quentin Tarantino film to win an Oscar for acting: Christoph Waltz for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Waltz won another Oscar for Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012). * Quentin Tarantino's highest-grossing film since Pulp Fiction (1994). * The final cut of the film ran three hours and ten minutes. It was cut down in 2 days before screenings. * Eli Roth directed the film-within-the-film, "Nation's Pride". * Simon Pegg was originally set to play Lieutenant Archie Hicox.